Here’s another thing that I’m way behind the curve on, that Web site that everybody was playing with a week or so ago that will tell you how many people in the U.S. have the same name as you:
| HowManyOfMe.com | ||
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Besides the result shown above, the search also generates some stats about each of your names (your first and last, that is):
- There are 992,896 people in the U.S. with the first name Jason.
- Statistically the 39th most popular first name.
- 99.7 percent of people with the first name Jason are male.
- There are 870 people in the U.S. with the last name Bennion.
- Statistically the 30,847th most popular last name (tied with 1665 other last names).
All very interesting. One thing makes me doubt the veracity of this exercise, though: I’m pretty sure there are at least 870 Bennions just in the Salt Lake area alone, not to mention the rest of the country. You see, I happen to know that my direct ancestors were two Welsh brothers who converted to Mormonism in the 1840s and, like most of the early church members, they were both polygamists. If you’ve ever glanced at the geneological records of a family that has polygamy in its history, you’ve seen an illustration of exponential growth at work. Utah is full of Bennions who all descend from those two brothers, and I’d be very surprised if there aren’t other pockets of Bennionosity elsewhere, too.
To the credit of whoever built the site, however, they don’t make any claims to complete accuracy:
[This site is m]ore accurate than a Magic 8-ball. Less accurate than distributing and collecting 300 million surveys.
Accurate or not, it’s a pretty fun site…
I see your point on the accuracy. The site tells me I am unique. No one else like me. A group of one. And a little redundant.
Sad to say that I know this to be untrue, for not only do I have a second cousin (once removed I believe) who has the same name as I, but for a time also went to the same Optical Shop for our glasses which, believe it or not, have quite nearly the same prescription. He also married a Coral, which is funny ’cause of my sister-in-law whose name is Korral.
Still, for a second I felt pretty warm and fuzzy.
And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? 🙂
1.1 million Brian’s, 21,000 Greenbergs, and 77 Brian Greenberg’s, according to the site.
This isn’t even close. When I lived in Manhattan, the White Pages had 15 pages that said “Greenberg – Greenberg” in them. I forget how many were on a page, but it’s gotta be at least 100, which makes 15,000 Greenbergs in NYC alone (and that’s not people – that’s families).
I also fed it my son’s name (Avery), which is more unique than mine. It predicatbly told me that he’s the only Avery Greenberg in the country, although I personally know of two others (when you give your kid a unique name, people come out of the woodwork to tell you of others they know with that name).
Well, there you have it: accuracy = nil. 🙂